Pages

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

LEMONS Weekend!

Brian Ready to Get on Track

Last weekend we were back at Carolina Motorsports Park for the 24 Hours of Lemons, and I'll just sum it up by saying that watching crap cars race on track for a weekend is a LOT of fun! There are Lemons (and Chumpcar) races all over the place, so if you have any interest in getting on track, working on cars, or having FUN, this is a sport for you! I was just attending to watch, and even I had FUN! Brian was one of the team members and drove on track, and I know that he had FUN too!

Pit Stop for Driver Change and Fuel

Team Coronautski had been born about 2 years ago with a 72 Dodge Coronet that had about 50% rust and 50% metal, so the short version is that the team of drivers have been working on this thing/car for a long time, mostly over the past 9 months. After testing the car at CMP in May, they continued to refine their repair strategy, fuel consumption, and basically lots of other surprise repairs as part after part kept breaking on the car!

The Awesome Super KGB Dodge Coronet

The result of all their work was that for day 1, Saturday's 8.5 hours of racing, the car stayed out on track, despite a bit of over heating of the starter (just push start it!), and one off-track excursion caused by a competitor's car that got a little loose, forcing the Dodge off track and causing some suspension damage. Despite those few setbacks and an extra couple of pit stops for a bad tire and to ice up the cool-shirt system, the team was running solidly around 14th-18th place all day long. Brian had driven in the middle of the afternoon, and held on to a steady 17th place during his hour and a half of driving.

Make your Corvette Race Car into a Golf Cart? Sure!

Overnight, the team managed multiple repairs and were back on track. It was a blast watching all 66 or so cars on track, and overall the racing was safe with only a few cars spinning or going off track, plus break downs that you have to expect with cars that cost less than 500 bucks! Going into the final 2 hours on Sunday, the team was on pace to finish in the top 15 overall.

Starter Issues on Saturday = Push Start!

However, the clutch that had been sourced from a mysterious source in the Far East at midnight near Shanghai finally failed. The original Dodge motor? No Problems! The transmission that had been transplanted from a Chevy Colorado to convert the Dodge from auto to manual? No Problems! The team of drivers, repairs, fuel stops? No problems! Even with losing the final 90 minutes on track, Team Coronautski still finished a very respectable 22nd overall, with 297 laps covered in approximately 13 hours of driving on track.

Friday Night Block Party. Even the Judges Want Photos of This Thing!

Great job to the team, friends, and family supporters! We anticipate that the purple powered Dodge will return to another Lemons race in February at Barber Motor Sports in Alabama, so stay tuned until then to follow along with more endurance racing crap-car goodness!